


R&R

by Nny



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Petting zoo, R&R
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 02:00:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10709814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: They watched a lamb being bottle-fed, fed the goats – although not with Barnes’ hat – and Clint almost tripped when being chased by a swan because it was the first time he’d seen Bucky laugh, bright and selfless and loud, and the breath caught in his chest at the sound.Apparently he’d had an ulterior motive. Apparently he was a fuckin’ idiot not to realize that.





	R&R

**R &R**

 

Unlike _some_ people in this crazy superhero team, _Clint_ knew how to take advantage of enforced vacation time. Fury had barely finished his sentence before he was on his feet, slinging his bow across his back and heading for the door at something that wasn’t so far short of a flat out run. Straight to the locker room, back into jeans and sneakers, bow tucked away a little more discreetly in a duffle he swung onto his shoulder, and then he was haring up the stairs and out into the sunshine. It had been literal days since he’d been out in it, and he took a long moment to tilt his head back and just bask.

Clint took a deep breath of exhaust-smoke and cart-coffee and the barest gently green edge of spring, and felt a grin spreading across his face. He had no plans – Clint was not a man that planned, it was part of his genetic make-up or something – but there were certain essentials that needed attending to, and Ravi the Coffee Guy wasn’t gonna cut it on this sort of day. Good coffee was worth a little effort, when you had a little time.

Taking the subway felt like blasphemy when the weather was so fine, so he sauntered along the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. He fished out his phone, typed ‘SUN!!!’ and an indecipherable string of emojis, sent it to Tasha – who was probably sparring with Steve, see previous comments about inability to use vacations appropriately – and after a second’s thought sent it to the rest of the team, too. Sam responded instantly with his own set of cheerful emojis, because Sam was nowhere near Clint’s favorite but always edged higher whenever electronic communication was involved. A few seconds later his phone buzzed again, and he was a little startled to see a text from Barnes; even more so when it turned out to be a picture of the goddamn grumpy cat, because who the hell had educated the guy about memes?

Clint responded with a picture of Princess Monster Truck and then shoved his phone into the top of his bag, crossing the street with a herd of German tourists and ducking into a little alley that had nothing much to grab the attention save a chalkboard with a solar-powered dancing flower zip-tied to one of its legs.

 _Poorly thought through sleep deprived choices_ , it said, with an arrow that pointed to the street, and _coffee_ with an arrow pointing deeper into the alley and a tiny chalkdust heart. And, okay, if this was a fairy tale – if _life_ was a fairy tale, or a slasher film, or an after school special – then Clint would be fucked several times over, because he could never resist a mysterious offer, and he could never remember to bring a ball of goddamn string. Life had proved over and over again that fairy tales weren’t exactly its area, though, and Clint had a million and one tiny unregarded sanctuaries pinned all over his mental city map.

 It was nothing much inside. Bare brick and local art, in the way of hipster coffee shops the western world over, wrought iron bar stools and the occasional sinfully comfortable armchair that would likely be the cause of WWIII. And, somehow, behind the counter, the most goddamn talented baristas, or the most expensive coffee machine, or… look, someone somewhere made a deal with the devil and Clint wasn’t judging, that was all.

 

Jin was behind the counter, the shop’s logo stretched all out of shape across her chest, a huge smile at home on face. She’d rearranged the syrups again, by color this time, and on the back counter there was a towering structure built out of take-out cups and plastic lids and wooden stirrers that was threatening to fall down any second.

“Morning, Hawkguy,” she said, and Clint scowled out of habit.

“Coffee,” he said and, pointed, “for _Clint_.”

“Sure,” she said, scrawled something that was definitely not short enough to be his name on the largest cup they had, then passed it across to Devonte who’d been hiding behind the muffin basket. He fumbled for it, caught sight of the sharpied words, bit down _hard_ on a laugh, and turned to the monstrous coffeemaker with his shoulders suspiciously unsteady.

“Kids these days,” Clint said. “No respect.”

“Coffee for The Least Hot Avenger?” Devonte called, and there was a perfect moment of silence when every head in the shop turned Clint’s way. He let his shoulders slump.

“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks for that.”

Clint had sold his soul for coffee. His soul, his self-respect, probably a few other things he’d never had any use for. He dragged out his phone again, snapped a quick picture of the cup in his hand and sent it Barnes’ way. _Guns_ , he got back, mysteriously, his phone buzzing harshly against the plate-glass door as he pushed it open. He leaned against the wall a second, breathing in richly scented steam as he painstakingly picked out a one-handed reply.

_Seems a little excessive. Fury’d be mad._

An eyeroll emoji came back. _*Flex*. Least hot my ass._

Clint tapped his phone against his teeth for a second before shrugging and shoving it back into his bag, not feeling up to the level of sarcasm that a response would require before the caffeine had hit his bloodstream. He took his first scalding sip, winced and shoved away from the wall, heading back out into to the sun-drenched world outside of the alley.

There wasn’t much of significance to his day. He took a wander through Central Park, ate a pretzel, wandered home through the weeds and cracked concrete, bought some amazing baklava from his local bodega, dropped most of it off with Simone – not every Avenger had a superhero metabolism, damn it – and fixed the leaking faucet in her bathroom while he was at it. The day ended with his feet, crossed at the ankle, propped up on the low wall that encircled the roof, beer in hand and a half-eaten burger on the paper plate on his lap. The sun had disappeared behind tall buildings a while back, but it was still painting the sky in shades of purple and orange and pink. He snapped a picture, feet off center and blurred against the bright-striped sky, and sent it to Tasha and Barnes.

Tasha responded with a truly hilarious picture of Steve Rogers, sprawled on his back and gasping up at the ceiling of the gym in Stark Tower like a beached fish, an expression of pained bemusement on his face.

 _Gotta teach me how to do that_ he replied, and she sent back a wink.

 _You will learn when one of us dies,_ which was a level of ominous that warranted screencapping and saving in his ‘ominous Russians’ folder alongside angry Colossus and way too many pictures of Barnes’ face.

Speaking of, Barnes’ response took a little longer. Eventually he sent his own picture of the sunset, just as beautifully colored but with something off about it. After a moment’s squinting, Clint realized that it was a reflection – that it’d been taken through a window, and he could see just the barest hint of Barnes’ scowl. Which made sense, since it took a special kind of grouchy to not take advantage of the weather, to stay all miserable and moodily lit inside.

 _Sunshine not your style?_ He responded. He left his phone on his thigh, waiting for any sign Barnes was typing, something odd and kinda unsettled in his stomach.

 _Steve was w tony,_ Barnes sent back, eventually, and Clint flailed, sitting up and slamming both feet back to the floor. What the _fuck?_

He quickly called up his contacts list and down to the Cs, stabbing his finger at ‘Captain Cut’ with a little more force than his elderly smartphone maybe deserved. It rang and rang on the other end, and Clint’s temper wound slowly higher until finally Steve answered with a kinda out of breath mumble that meant Clint knew _exactly_ what he’d been doing.

“Clint?”

“Tell me Barnes’s not still on house arrest,” he snapped, and there was a suspicious silence on the other end of the call.

“He said it was –“

“Okay, sure, we’re gonna let the guy with the guilt complex the size of Tony’s ego make rational decisions today. But hey, you got your booty call, right?”

“Clint, that’s not –“

“Fair? No. How about that.”

Thumbing a button wasn’t as satisfactory as slamming down a handset – even a flip phone would’ve felt better. He wasn’t sure what it was that had him so angry, why it felt so _personal_. Maybe it was the period directly after the Chitauri had showed up, when everyone had looked at him with suspicion and he tried not to read Tasha’s constant quiet presence as something she hadn’t chosen. Maybe it was the time after he’d recruited her, how long it’d been before he’d seen the sun.

He unlocked his phone again and logged in to his work email, ignoring the text from Tony written in caps.

_Fury –_

_Tomorrow I’m stealing the Soldier, assuming clearance high enough._

Then he sat in the slowly dying light and googled what the hell to do with him once he had him.

 

*

 

Bucky woke to the smell of hot coffee, the mug on his dresser still steaming. Had to’ve been one of the spies, since no one else was quiet enough, and he assumed Romanova since the archer’d been out of there like his ass was on fire the day before. So he was a little surprised when he emerged into the common area to find Barton doing something at the stove, a pale purple shirt stretched over his shoulders and unflatteringly baggy jeans barely clinging to his ass.

“Thanks,” Bucky said, raising the mug a little, and Barton turned to give him a grin.

“You’re gonna need it,” he said. When Bucky just cocked an eyebrow, his grin widened in response. “We’ve got _plans_.”

“Unless they revolve around the couch and the gym you’re shit out of luck,” Bucky said, trying not to let any bitterness seep into his tone. “’cos Fury’s decided –“

“That I’m a responsible adult,” Barton finished, and shot Bucky the kind of conspiratorial look that made him look all of twelve years old. “Now eat your damned pancakes and put this on.”

‘This’ was a slim black band for Bucky’s wrist. There was nothing visible on it, nothing obviously technological, but Barton had to close it with his thumb, presumably for the print, and it had the cold oddly heavy feel of something that’d come off for nothing short of a bomb blast.

“Just imagine it’s counting your steps,” Barton said, fidgeting with the thing until it was settled to his satisfaction. “Picture yourself as a suburban mom. Your name is Helen.” He looked up to meet Bucky’s eyes, and the sparkle in his made Bucky’s lips automatically turn up into a little grin. Barton’s eyes dropped to his mouth and he blinked, the surprise on his face unflattering.

“So where’re we headed?” Bucky asked, taking a step back and snagging the plate Barton had set out for him.

Rather than answer, Barton stuffed a forkful of pancake into his mouth and gave him another one of those stupid grins, his cheeks bulging out like a chipmunk. Bucky sighed, resigned, and followed suit.

The instructions for dressing were ‘nothing fancy’, and considering how much Barton whined when expected to show up in anything even vaguely resembling a suit, Bucky figured shirt and jeans was his best bet, black on black, battered boots on his feet. He hung a pair of aviators from the v-neck of his shirt and ran a hand through his hair, shoving a cap over it before heading out to join Barton by the elevator.

The guy was already wearing sunglasses, leaning back into the corner as the elevator started moving, a faintly infuriating little smirk on his lips. Bucky figured he was angling for more questions, was aiming to annoy, so instead he folded his arms across his chest and let himself relax against the wall. Wherever they ended up it’d be better than another day working out until he was drenched in sweat, ordering take-out, watching whatever he could bear for more than five minutes on Tony’s giant TV.

When they walked out the door of Stark Tower it was all Bucky could do to keep walking. He’d been out on the roof, sure, but it’d been a long time since street level. The sunlight was bliss but everything else was overwhelming, too loud, too fast moving. Without the focus of a target, the blinkers that a mission put in place, he ducked his head and focused on his feet while he took a couple deep breaths.

Barton was a couple steps ahead when he looked up again. He was waiting but not impatient, expression understanding but not sympathetic, and for that he was a better companion than Tony or Steve, the only others Bucky’d left the tower with since he’d arrived.

“Coffee?”

“Sure,” Bucky said. It’d at least give him an adjustment period, somewhere off the street.

There was a chalkboard outside an alley. _Life happens,_ it said. _Coffee helps._ The dim interior of the shop was relaxing and Bucky felt the knots in his shoulders ease a little. The guy behind the counter was skinny and short, some kinda twisting pattern shaved into his black hair, and he smiled like sunshine when he saw Barton.

“Hey Devonte,” Barton said. “Two coffees, please. Big as they come.”

The guy set to work, coaxing dark coffee out of the behemoth behind the counter, turning surreptitiously to get another look at Barton when he thought no one was looking. Bucky accidentally caught his eye and, ‘cos he was nothing if not an asshole, smirked a little and stepped in a little closer to Barton’s side.

“Two coffees,” Devonte said after another couple minutes, and his hangdog expression made Bucky feel a little bad, so he grabbed his wallet and left a healthy tip when he paid.

“This is supposed to be my treat,” Barton protested, and Bucky just grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him, shoving him towards the door.

 _Clint_ , his cup said, with a tiny black heart. _Clint’s boyfriend_ was on Bucky’s, and he burned his mouth on a laugh.

Bucky had woken late enough that the sun was high in the sky and the subway was deserted, just the two of them in the carriage and an old Chinese guy reading the paper. Bucky scowled at his reflection in the dark window and thought about cutting his hair. Barton was slumped down in his seat, his feet crossed and resting against the pole in the center of the aisle. It should’ve been a precarious position but he was rock solid, swaying with the movement of the train. His eyes were closed and Bucky took a moment to study the lines of him, wondering what the hell had motivated him to drag Bucky out anyway. He wasn’t someone Bucky knew too well yet; mostly he had an impression of laughter – mostly at himself – and deadly fuckin’ accuracy with a bow and a cutting comment.

Barton’s blue eyes flickered open and caught Bucky’s, and he gave him a wide open smile that Bucky wasn’t sure he deserved.

When they got off the train in Queens, Bucky wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting; a petting zoo sure as hell wasn’t it.

 

*

 

The look on Barnes’ face when they walked into the zoo was something else, like he didn’t know whether to grin like a kid or punch Clint in the arm. Whatever the resulting expression was had an edge of vulnerability to it that tugged at Clint’s heart. He cleared his throat, uncertain and uncomfortable because of it, and headed off determinedly in the direction of the farm themed bit, ‘cos he had ambitions of feeding Barnes’ cap to a goat.

He wasn’t sure exactly why it was the zoo he’d picked. He’d looked at pictures of kids shrieking with laughter at pot-bellied pigs and it’d been pretty much the opposite of everything Bucky Barnes – and at the same time it carried a lot of the Bucky in Steve’s stories, big brother and big joker and patience of a saint.

They watched a lamb being bottle-fed, fed the goats – although not with Barnes’ hat – and Clint almost tripped when being chased by a swan because it was the first time he’d seen Bucky laugh, bright and selfless and loud, and the breath caught in his chest at the sound.

Apparently he’d had an ulterior motive. Apparently he was a fuckin’ idiot not to realize that.

Clint trailed Bucky around the rest of the zoo in a daze. He was with it enough to take a picture of Bucky with a rabbit in his lap, at least, and sent it to Steve as something that fell into the gap between an apology and an accusation. They finally left when Bucky’s stomach started growling too loudly for Clint to ignore; their trip through the gift shop meant Bucky carried a stuffed wolf with him onto the subway, its spherical face perfectly matching Bucky’s scowl.

The train this time was far busier and they stood close together, holding onto the same pole. Clint kept his face turned away, watching a young woman’s expressions as she reacted unselfconsciously to her book.

“You wanna – “ he said after a second, “we have this cook-out most nights at my building. Up on the roof. If you - ?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, and from the tone of his voice he was smiling, so it was a good goddamn thing that Clint was looking down. “Sounds good.”

 

*

 

Barton – Clint – lived in Bed-Stuy. His building was old and kinda falling apart, but it held inside it the signs of being well-loved. There were welcome mats outside doors, flowers in window boxes nodding in through windows, a kid’s tricycle trusted to the corner of a hallway. Clint’s apartment was big and split level, and filled with nothing much of anything. He went over to get burgers, brats and beers from the refrigerator and Bucky followed him and leaned against the counter, watching him move without anything like subtlety.

It’d been an interesting day. It’d been a day as far from being an Avenger as it could have been. It’d been the best day that Bucky could remember having recently, and a lot of it was to do with the guy in front of him who had slipped effortlessly somehow over the course of the day from Barton into Clint. And where Barton was safe territory, the _Widow’s_ territory and therefore off-limits to any thoughts outside of ‘team’, Clint was something kinda new. Clint acted like an idiot and smiled like a kid. Clint picked up all the warmth of the sunshine and reflected it back in his voice. Clint was doing something dangerous to Bucky’s insides, and he was pretty sure he liked it.

So he circled the counter and snagged the beers from Clint’s hand, placing them carefully beside the refrigerator in a way that left him pressed up close. He watched with satisfaction as Clint swallowed, as his eyes turned dark.

“Thanks for today,” he said, voice low. “Thanks for thinkin’ of me.”

Clint smiled off-center, his eyes flicking away.

“Can’t seem to help it,” he said, embarrassed and honest and a little ashamed, and that couldn’t stand. Bucky lifted his hand to cup Clint’s cheek, rubbing his thumb across fair stubble.

“I’m good with that,” he said, and leaned in to press his lips to Clint’s dawning smile.


End file.
